How do You Set Your E-book Prices? | E-publishing | Forum

Post edited 7:46 am – January 30, 2012 by Jennifer Mattern

Today's daily discussion is about e-book prices. More specifically, how do you set them? 

You've probably noticed that e-book prices can vary widely. Some sell in the $50 range. There's a craze in fiction markets to set a $.99 price point. And while there is no single right price for all e-books (despite the way certain marketplaces act by penalizing you for the right to true pricing freedom), there is a right way to go about it. You should treat e-books like any other product. Remember, pricing is one of the 4 Ps of marketing. It's fundamental to a product's success. 

First let me say that I'm personally very against the $.99 price point. That's not to say it won't work for some authors. It has. But I have a problem with it for a few reasons:

1. What worked early in the game doesn't work as well when an idea is saturated. This price point is much more saturated than when people like Amanda Hocking did it. 
2. From what I've seen from some authors, there's a misconception that a low price point will do all of your marketing for you. And I can't support anything that makes writers even lazier marketers than many already are. Throw in the fact that you have to sell many more copies to earn the same profit as a higher price point, and that marketing becomes more essential, not less so.
3. It sets a bad precedent with readers. As a freelance writer I've spent years battling misconceptions about what a writer's work is worth. And I've done so successfully in my career. I don't want to see book buyers slip into a similar mentality where they think months spent on writing, editing, and laying out a book are work less than a dollar. It's fine when it's an exception, but I see it becoming the rule when I read threads from buyers on places like Amazon (where bad reviews are given if the price isn't rock bottom in some cases). 

I've covered this issue twice now at All Indie Publishing (one of AFW's sister sites). There are other reasons to be concerned with automatic extremely low pricing just because others seem to be doing it. I'm not going to rehash them all here. Check out the posts if you want more of my thoughts on the issue (and Zoe Winters' as one post is an interview with her).

• Zoe Winters on E-book Pricing: Does Low-balling Attract the Wrong Kind of Reader?
• Revisiting 99 Cent E-book Pricing (this was a response to Joanna Penn's post on the subject)

As with other products, I believe each e-book is unique. Well, at least different types of e-books are unique. For example, you have fiction vs nonfiction. Then you have traditional nonfiction e-books (information product e-books that were around before the big move into e-publishing versions of print books) and now we have print nonfiction books converted to e-books. 

With fiction, I understand some of the lower pricing. It's what the overall market is doing. And while I'm not a fan of pricing e-books significantly less than print counterparts (because of misunderstandings about the true costs involved and how they spread far beyond the printing process), I can understand pricing slightly less to deal with those reader concerns. I still think $.99 is too low for most, unless it's a short-term promotional price or the book was quickly slapped together and posted for sale as opposed to professionally edited and designed. 

With nonfiction, for me it comes down to what kind of e-book you're selling. I'll continue to sell information product e-books ranging from $4.95 to $37 (and maybe more in the future if a title warrants it). Their pricing largely depends on the length and depth of content. They're not meant to be books alone. They're more like all-out courses or workshops that you can buy in print format. And if you want to charge higher prices as is common in that market, I think you have to be prepared to market them that way. 

On the other hand, when I release The Query-Free Freelancer, it will be in both print and e-book form. I'm planning a $14.95 price point for the print book and $9.95 for the e-book. It will cost more than a very short information product e-book. But it will still cost less than the print version, even though it will be longer than the longest information product e-books I sell. 

With two versions of the book, I feel it's best to start with the print book's pricing. That involves figuring out the publishing costs, sales and profit goals, and market comparisons. At that point, I had to decide whether or not to discount the e-book version, and if so by how much. I decided to discount it a bit, but not to an obscenely low price point. First, I don't want e-book sales to discourage print sales. This is still primarily a print release. And second, I don't want to set a bad precedent. I can always lower prices later if I want to. But raising prices after they're initially set low (and not announced as a limited time discount) is much more tricky on the marketing and PR side of things. 

So those are my thoughts on the issue. What about you? How do you set e-book prices, and why do you do it that way?

Jenn

LOL I hadn't thought about people like that. But hey… people like you who can't wait for the end will just be more likely to buy! 

I think it's always a good idea to give people the first chapter. In this day and age, "try before you buy" is almost an expectation. And excerpts have always been used to promote authors' works. It just makes sense. Plus, the author gets to control how and when the excerpts are released (rather than a single run in a print pub), and like in your case they can build their own list for future marketing in the process. Seems pretty win-win to me.